A couple of months ago, we heard rumors that Google was planning on redesigning the home button which could potentially find its way to 2016’s Nexus handsets. We weren’t sure what the new home button would do, besides offer up a new look, but the folks at Android Police have recently managed to uncover some new clues.
In case you missed the earlier report, the new home button that Google plans on introducing will be an animated button. It will feature a white circle in the middle, but when animated it will show Google’s colors radiating outwards around it. According to Android Police, they speculate that this could be linked to Google Now/Assistant because according to their source, disabling Google Now will see the four colored circles go away.
Since no one has actually tried it out for themselves, it’s really anyone’s guess as to what else it could do. However from what we have heard, it sounds like it could do what Apple’s home button on its iOS devices does, which is to launch Siri, or in Google’s case, Google Now or Google Assistant.
In any case take it with a grain of salt, but it also sounds like the home button could be an exclusive feature to 2016’s Nexus devices, which last we heard would be made by HTC and could also feature some software exclusives.